


Words under skin

by Kit



Series: The liberati mageling [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dragon Age Kink Meme, Friendship, M/M, Magister Fenris AU, Missing Scene, Power Dynamics, Running in Circles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 05:03:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1332979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fenris is a magister in exile, assisting the Mage Underground from Denarius's mansion. His sister is lost, Justice keeps Bethany tied to the Darktown clinic, and Hawke hates everything. Anders thought he would die in the Deep Roads. Everything is rather strange. A Running In Circles interlude. Mostly smut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words under skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thinkfirst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinkfirst/gifts).



> This is set in the RiC universe between parts 2-3 (so, best read after[ chapter thirty one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1055730/chapters/2708554)). This is basically a gift for the lovely OP, who was promised some smut very early on in the writing of this behemoth, and instead got a whole load of plot.

> _I've lived a life_  
>  _illuminated and_  
>  _choked_  
>  _ by dreaming  _ \- FAITH, Dorothy Porter

 

Fenris had taken Denarius’s mansion.

Anders heard that from Bethany, who smiled ruefully at him from her sister’s arms. It was, she’d told him, just _like_ a magister, running part of the mage underground from a mansion in Hightown.

“He has a point,” Anders managed. “No one would know what they were looking at.”

Bethany laughed, gently extricating herself from Marian’s hold. “I’ve been there,” she said. “Mostly, what they’re looking at are dust bunnies and corpses.”

Nox snorted. She stood close to the wall, as weary and grimy as the rest of them, her eyes constantly flicking to Bethany, then back again. Now, she looked at Anders, chin raised. “Without slaves, he is a poor housekeeper? This does not surprise me.”

Anders remembered another mansion. The walls of books and half open boxes that made new mazes every time one of the siblings took over a room for the day. Drifts of clothes; the plates they’d bought instead of washing them. His own, small, red-furnished room, as neat as a closed door could leave it.

“You,” he told her, “Are _not_ one to talk.”

A stupid thing to say. He watched Nox flinch. A brief spasm of confusion replaced by tight annoyance. She had given him light in the Deep Roads. She wasn’t Varania. When she scowled, she looked just like Fenris.

“Sorry, Nox, that was—”

“—I would not know,” she said. Her eyes hard, thumbprint bruising showing beneath them, the markings on her face mixing with the shadowy clinic so that she was all harsh angles and exhaustion. “The magister is probably waiting for you,” she said. “Even if he doesn’t know it.”

Anders stared.

“I’m not blind, mage. And I’m…I’m glad neither of us died, in there.”

Hawke raised an eyebrow. “What about me?”

Nox’s laugh was brief and hard, her expression did warm as she shot a look at their leader. “You are terrifying. Your survival was never in doubt.”

Anders nodded, slowly. “Right on all counts,” he said. “Nox, I’m honored.”

“I am tired. Go away.”

Anders did not need to be told three times.

* * *

The front door opened easily, not a lock or warding glyph to be seen. Anders’s sigh echoed off the tiled floor, dissipating to join the dust. Bare footprints ghosted the stairs, while cobwebs trailed the railing. Light seemed to come through in heavy, reluctant falls from the window, stained gold with grime and the late afternoon. Above him, floorboards creaked.

“If you’re up there, Fenris, you should know that your security is _lousy_. A cat could get in here. Run amok.” Anders pitched his voice to carry, sagging a little against one wall. Maker, he was tired. If he had to climb all those stairs—

“—I thought,” Fenris said, voice cracked and hoarse as he walked slowly out onto the landing, “You liked the creatures.”

Anders laughed. A small, muffled thing, but it helped him breathe. “I’m glad to see you, too.”

“You were dead.” Stark words, Fenris’s voice gaining strength as the healer watched. “You were all dead. You had to be. No one sent word. The entrance you used into the Deep Roads was closed. I checked. You didn’t—”

“—I didn’t dream,” Anders said. “Of anything. The dark. Tainted ground. Andraste’s teeth, I don’t know. I felt half cut—”

“—you…frightened me.” Fenris swallowed, and Anders watched in faint amazement as the other man blushed. “Don’t do that again.”

“I love you, too.” The words felt ridiculous. Too small. Too big. Impossible and loud and silent and _right_ , but his heartbeat was deafening and he could still taste the Deep Roads in his mouth, and so there wasn’t much more to do except slide down the wall. Tiled floors hurt. But they kept wonderfully _still_. A good place to wait, until Fenris made it down all the damn stairs.

* * *

Fenris cursed. (Of _course_ he cursed). The words echoed with his footsteps as he ran down to meet him, falling to his knees and bracing Anders by the forearms. He shook. Anders felt it in his body and grip, saw the pulse beating in the long, narrow throat. He laughed, and the warm, breathless tangle of sound skirled between them, all shock and weariness and slow joy.

Fenris kissed him. (Of _course_ he kissed him), and Anders wanted to pull away because of the dirt and the taste of old fear on his tongue, but Fenris only groaned and caught at his lower lip, hands warm on his face, and Anders was laughing again. Laughing and gasping and letting his hands tangle in his friend’s ragged hair. Fenris shifted his hold and straddled him. Anders’s world tilted as Fenris arched forward, taller and and flushed and shaking with it. The world narrowed rapidly—the feeling of linen and skin, and Fenris hard against his thigh. The pressure and warmth and the _confidence_ of it caught at Anders’s heart.

“Maker. You _did_ miss me.”

Fenris laughed, abashed. “I can think of worse homecomings.”

“Not complaining,” Anders said, half groaning and letting his head rest against Fenris’s chest. “Except that this floor is freezing and I haven’t slept in a week. Not properly. Not—” the words thickened and broke. “I _missed_ you.”

Lips, soft against temple. Fenris’s voice, soft and deep in his chest. The old voice in the dark. “I’ll help you with the stairs.”

* * *

Anders did not remember the stairs. He barely remembered bathing—only the first sweet shock of water on his skin, and Fenris’s slightly appalled laughter. Water. Laughter. Warmth. Sleep. And the sheets were even clean.

When he woke it was dark, and his friend was with him, one arm flung across his eyes.

 _His friend_. Stranger, somehow, to think that then anything else. Stranger than _lover_ (not-quite-not-yet-hope-and-want-and _promise_ ) and a world away from _master_ (fear-dread-hate-love-anger-I-will-free-you-when-I-can) _._ Friendship gave him pause. A potent thing, strong and strange as the feeling of their first names in each other’s mouths. Friendship was the trip across the Imperium and arguments in the Hanged Man, and it was that first moment, in the week before Funalis, when Anders told Fenris that he would stay a slave another day, if it helped him find his sister.

The bead creaked as he moved, and Fenris groaned softly when Anders bent forward to kiss his palm.

“Anders?”

“Still here.” Another kiss. A slow flick of his tongue up to a fingertip.

Fenris’s breath caught. “I— _ah—_ I meant what I said.”

“What you _didn’t_ say, you mean,” Anders drawled. He bit down lightly on the other man’s thumb.

“I said it, mage,” Fenris growled. “I’ve said it every day for— _fas_ —for years. Stop that.”

Anders laughed. “Make me.”

 _Make me._ Defiance and desire, blurring with an angry, half broken man in the old Minrathous house.

Fenris exhaled. “Next time. Now, I…” he swallowed. “Make _me._ Let me.” He pulled his hand from Anders’s grasp, letting his fingers skim down over his throat, his chest--feeling the play of muscle and skin and wiry, red-gold hair that felt strange against his tongue. He licked hard at the base of Anders’s throat, sucking as he whimpered. It felt like he swallowed the man’s pulse. When he looked up, they were both breathing hard.

“Show me,” he whispered. “Tell me. I’ve never—” he shook his head, ears burning. “You have more experience than I.”

“Are you _sure_ you’re a bloody Tevinter?” The words teased, and the accompanying smirk was wicked, but Anders’s eyes were kind.

A part of him wanted to look away. But it was not the part, Fenris was coming to understand, that was currently controlling his brain. He shifted to a siting position, never taking his eyes away from Anders, sprawled in his bed. He laid the challenge.

“I’ve _seen_ you.”

“Ah, so you have.” Anders smiled. “That is, you realise, completely fucking filthy.”

Fenris blushed. But he only raised an eyebrow.

“No defense, love?” The healer kicked covers away, and eased his smalls down over his hips. “Good.” The teasing smile bloomed into a grin, eyes dancing as Fenris swallowed and leaned forward.

“You will be the death of me.”

Anders laughed. “Hardly.” Smalls discarded, he caught Fenris’s hand at the wrist, eyes never leaving his. “I thought you said you wanted me to _show_ ,” he said, sweet, and whispering the small, slick mercy of a spell that every Circle mage seemed to know. Fenris’s eyes widened as he saw the spill of liquid on his palm, and swore as Anders took himself in hand, fisting his cock and laughing at the sight of him.

“Did you ever see me like this?”

“I—”

“—how long could you hold out, Fenris? What made you wake up, made you come in your own bed? Something as simple as this?” He arched up, letting his breathing grow ragged, letting his head fall back and every shaking thread of want show through in his voice. He brought Fenris’s hand down; felt him shake as he let Anders direct his fingers.

“Good, love.” The words came out a groan, and Fenris started to smile. “Though you didn’t answer me.”

“—that’s because it doesn’t matter, mage.” Fenris whispered, the thumb of his other hand ghosting over Anders’s cheekbone, his lower lip. “I just—I want—”

Frustration twisted his face, words trapped in this throat, under his skin; in the pressure of his hand and the weight of Anders there. Anders’s hand squeezed around his, and when Fenris bent to swallow the head of his cock, Anders forgot about teasing him.

At least for a while.


End file.
